My Studio Tour

My studio is a bonus room over my three-car garage. Unfortunately, it has sloped walls, so hanging quilts is a challenge, so there are none at the moment. Enlighten me if you know a way to hang them without them hanging down in my face!!! 

I cleaned a bit and re-arranged my studio. This is just one-half of the room lengthwise and I haven't really put things where they may end up, but I will share what I've done so far, otherwise, it will get too messy to share with you. Need to get those cords tidied up! 

This is my office/computer area. TV is on one of those wall mounts that pivots 360 degrees so I can see it from anywhere in the office. I'm very fortunate to have a huge room to myself and a daybed to boot! I have two screens connected to my computer so I can look at two Web sites at a time, great for copy/pasting things. You can move the mouse from one to the other, so very cool. There's my iPad for playing games, texting, FaceTime calls and reading email. See that bright red chair? It is the most comfortable chair ever! Not to mention expensive...I just had to have it. 

This is the same table that makes an L-shape so I can turn around in my chair and be right there, not really sure how I'm going to use this space. If/when I ever get the serger threaded, I can do some serging there.  I think the white shelf will become a research area where I'll put my quilting books, manuals, DVDs and most recent magazines. I got a couple of those curtain rods from IKEA that the mini Valentine's quilt is hanging from and plan to hang blocks there as I work on them until they are ready for the design wall/placement. Display stuff or tool storage, haven't worked that out yet. Suggestions? My walls are sloped so I didn't feel like I could hang it much higher because they would hang down in the way and look funny. I may even use it as a to-do list and clip index cards or even the patterns of my projects to keep me motivated, akin to fast-food orders clipped in front of the workers so they know what to make. Might end up in the way and I'll bag the idea, however, I'll have a ton of holes in the wall to repair!!! There's a lightweight Jamone there that I was taking with me when taking classes, but I haven't done that for awhile so it's tucked in there for storage. There's also my Babyloc serger that's really, really old and I can't seem to get it threaded right, so there it sits. The fancy boxes have a project in each...untouched so far. Sign.  There's a bunch of embroidery thread sets there, also. My two fancy machines both do embroidery, but I don't. A cute little box with nine drawers that have various things in them. I put a mat there so maybe I won't junk up the area...haha  

On the same side of the room, there's a half-wall next and then another table with my Viking Ruby Deluxe sitting there. There's a bunch of plastic bins that I bought when JoAnn's moved and I filled them with fabric, but it's a mess, I didn't clean and straight those. You can see the IKEA curtain rods better in this view. There's some rods on the half-wall that I hang patterns and buckets for stuff, but I need to organize that better. I'm looking for a way to display my jelly rolls, not sure I'll leave they up there on top of the bins.  My photography skills need so much work, sorry about that. 

This is a better view of the bins and the curtain rods, however, it's blurry. I might re-take the photos when I've done more "living with the set-up." There's one of those colored bins for scrapbooking, but I have my applique BOMs in mine with a clear sectioned bin on top with applique tools, didn't straighten that either. 

This is the last table on that wall. My old Viking Designer SE sits there with a window behind the chair. That's an old wooden "secretary" that I bought with an antique desk, but it actually used too much space on the desk, so I just robbed it!  Those are all organizing books that I stuck there, not sure they will stay, but for now I wanted to put soemthing in those cubbies. I have a pegboard that I'm going to re-install on the other wall and that rack will go there. You can see my plastic pretzel jars that I'm recycling with my scraps and are separated by color. I eat a lot of pretzels!!! I need to find the lids and label them.

So, here's the first half altogether. It's a pretty big space and I'll have all the table tops a mess in a few short hours. 

This is the area just passed the half wall with all the bins and the front wall with more pretzel jars and more fabic bins and a thread rack. There's a pole to the left with a bunch of "in progress" blocks from some one of Bonnie Hunter's scrap quilts, but that was probably Step 1 and there's no more steps done...

Hope you enjoyed this side of the room and when I get the cutting, ironing and HQ16 long arm machine cleaned up, I'll share that. As always, if you have some great ideas how you'd use my space, speak up before it gets too out of hand. LOL I will also show you the three closets I've taken over when I get them prettied up! 

The whole side...hard to really see, but there's plenty of tablespace that I can junk up in no time and four chairs to sit and rest/daydream. These IKEA tabletops are 20+ years old and so easy to re-arrange, but sometimes I wish I had some drawers.  

Well, I've been cleaning and straightening my studio and I have another section finished.

This is my cutting area. I continued with my fabric bins and my pretzel jars sorted by color on one wall, so when you walk in you see a ton of color which I love. I have a couple of those wooden ruler holders for my most-used rulers close to my mat. The black laundry bag is where I collect my true throw away scraps. After I fill a pretzel jar on the table top which I seem to use better than throwing each scrap into the bag, I then dump it the bag. I hope to get enough to fill a pillowcase and offer it as a dog bed. You can see that there are 36 bins under the table and they have some tools and such in them, but most are UFOs and labeled as such. There's six more sitting out with another bin on top with my most used tools. These are also UFOs, but not yet labeled and are the most recent. The black garage-type racks are from Costco and I just set a huge IKEA tabletop on top of two of them and it's so wonderful to have a table that size. Three sets of bins fit perfectly under them. 

There's my Accuquilt GO! on the table with more bins with UFOs under it. The kitchen island/table has all my dies and a couple new PIGs on each shelf. No free bins available for them and I'm not buying more. I'm going to finish a UFO to free up a bin for them...one of these days. There is also a huge Post-It notepad leaning there. They are huge and very sticky, so I stick one up on a free wall and list of which project I should be working on...or not. LOL

I moved my pegboard to this wall, hoping I have enough room to use my GO! It's a tight squeeze in there.  The white rack was another JoAnn's moving sale item and I have tons of tools hanging there and are mostly not opened yet so it looks like a shop! This stems from not-being-able-to-find-something and then I buy another, then found the old one, consequently, lots of new tools. The rest of the pegboard is scissors and rulers and whatever I still haven't found. There's an IKEA bar with most of my rulers that I rarely use, but had to have. 

Here's my ironing station and I love my iron. I made the top by covering a piece of plywood with batting and used the silver ironing board cover fabric and stapled it to the back. It's wonderful and just the right size for ironing yardage. Again, more UFOs in bins. Hmmm, that's probably more than 100 bins. Still a lot of tools and BOM monthly envelopes in them, so shouldn't have that many unfinished quilts--in this room!! However, you won't believe my closets, I probably do have 130 UFOs total. So embarrassing...I've been salivating over a bunch of kits that are online, but, so far, I've not hit the "order" button on those I've added to my cart. Sigh. 

Will post more photos as I get the next area clean.